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The alternative to UHub's Twitter feed
By adamg on Thu, 11/17/2022 - 9:20pm
Of course, there's a UHub Mastodon feed. Why do I mention it? Oh, no reason, why do you ask?
If you haven't used Mastodon yet, it'll feel somewhat similar to Twitter. The hardest part might be getting on it, partly because there's no one central place to create an account, partly because so many people are leaving Twitter the servers on the network are having trouble keeping up with the demand. But fire away in the comments with questions.
The scene at Twitter's Kendall Square office at 5 p.m.:
It’s been a ride pic.twitter.com/0VDf5hn2UA
— Matt Miller (@brainiaq2000) November 17, 2022
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Comments
Fail Whale...
...would make a good nickname for Elon Musk.
Also consider
the "F*cked Truck": https://mastodon.social/@jimmylittle/109346163663374852
I've been using ...
Elon Skum
I've been using...
... Elmo Muskrat
What's that sign in the
What's that sign in the background say? "#Love where you work"?
Now seeing that departing
Now seeing that departing employees are using #LoveWhereYouWorked
ain't twitter a web-site.
dont all websites eventually 404. not a big surprise. (e.g.- hotline is still a thing becuz it is a protocol and individual servers closing wont make it disapparate)
Big Surprise
I think the guy who just paid $44 billion dollars for a smoothly running website is surprised at how quickly he killed it. This isn’t someone’s birdwatching blog we’re talking about.
I’m on Twitter
And haven’t had any issues using the platform. This is the online version of “I’m moving to Canada.” Everyone including Adam are still on Twitter and will continue to be.
If I disconnect the brake lights on my car...
the car will continue to run just fine and if I get lucky, it may run for a long time!
That doesn't mean that it's a good idea or that I should expect it to continue running for any length of time.
How is it dead?
Working fine for me.
Sounds just like you are mad that one political party/view no longer has an echo chamber.
It's not dead yet
And who knows, maybe it won't die for a long time, but firing or force-quitting most of the staff who keep the place running is not always the smartest thing to do.
uh, what?
Where did you develop this idea? Nobody was talking about politics here, but do you really think twitter was dominated by a political party? I'm guessing you got it from...wait for it...an echo chamber!
if...
pan-am, t.w.a., pontiac, oldsmobile, blockbuster/west coast video, radioshack, d.e.c., filenes, ... can go out of business; then, so can twitter.
Well, not really...
Olds and Pontiac did not go out of business. GM just dropped those names.
But yup, Twitter could go. More likely is that it gets sold and revived. It's not as defunct as those other names.
fire away with Mastodon questions
I'll try to help Adam answer...
A place to start: https://joinmastodon.org/, click on Create Account. It will then show you servers that are available. If a server has a "Create Account" button, there is no approval step to join. In general, it doesn't matter which server you join, but I try to honor the intent in the description (i.e, if the server is meant for a certain population to which I do not belong, I don't join).
There are several general-purpose servers currently taking new users.
I'm on social.coop, which
I'm on social.coop, which seems nice.
I tell people
It doesn't matter which server you are on. But its ideal if you join one that suits you or your interest.
There are LGBTQIX server, ones focusing on Urban Dev and Transit, Some general ones, some focus on music, being a furry, news focused ones, and on and on.
The server you are on dictates what the local feed is like. (Federated is TOO much btw) So if you want to see transit or talk about gay issues, you might want to be on that server.
You can always have multiple accounts on different servers and use redirection or what not.
But my thing with mastadon is.. I just feel like its not intutive to use. Twitter.. you just create an account, then open the app, follow some peeps, and boom you have a feed.
The other thing that will plague mastodon is lag between servers. Yes you can add people, but I often get errors or it takes a very long time to it to even find the person so I can add them. Again to a user who doesn't know much more than insta or twitter, this may be hard to understand and prevent large scale adoption.
For me I am just akin'ing it to IRC. The whole multiple servers thing feels like IRC.
ups and downs
I just got an account. I'd like to find where disability Twitter is migrating to. Unfortunately, Mastodon isn't as disability-friendly as Twitter and I'm worried that the informative & supportive disability community won't manage the transition.
Yeah, following people on different servers from yours
is a bit of a pain and needs to be made more user friendly.
I'm not really clear on what makes it hard.
It's *unintuitive* -- you have to put their URL or account name in your search box -- but it's not complicated.
how has email succeeded??
Every time I want to send an email to someone, I have to put BOTH their username AND domain name! What a pain.
But seriously, if you think of the Mastodon infrastructure as similar to email, it's pretty easy to understand.
French Toast Alert?
Did you create the French Toast account?? Priorities!!! :)
Somebody suggested it after I reactivated the alert
I suspect I will in advance of the first real snow forecast for the area.
I don’t like Musk
but the true colors of all you haters comes flying through here. Hate breeds hate.
And since you took the time to make that comment
Does that mean that hate breeds hate then breeds even more hate? If so, thanks, gives me a chance to post that Wrath of Khan scene for the second time in two days.
People thinking Twitter is running poorly is hate now?
Man, I can't wait to hear what you think about people's comments about the MBTA then!
Local Boston Mastodon Server
I want to plug https://better.boston/. Set up and run by some wicked-cool local friends of mine.
Yeah, a lot of Boston folks are congregating there
Including both restaurant-news guy Marc Hurwitz and Mayor Wu (although she hasn't said much yet, but then, she only set up the account last night).
Just signed up
Probably should have mentioned UHub, but didn't :-(
This is an overblown moral
This is an overblown moral panic. Twitter will be fine.
You're either misunderstood what a moral panic is
or you're getting very different news about why people are fleeing Twitter than I am.
(EDIT: Or it's sarcasm, I guess?)
Funny
Adam has been posting all day on TWITTER!
Funny how that works.
Swing and a miss
Man, my haters are so special.
Nowhere have I said I'm leaving Twitter. It's just always good to have an exit plan, just in case (and to see what the new medium is all about). I have a Facebook feed, too, does that mean I'm leaving Twitter even harder?
Moral panic?
Imagine you're about to drive over a bridge.
But before you do, you learn that all the guys responsible for inspecting, maintaining, and fixing the bridge have left the country. Sure...you can drive on the bridge. It's still there. It'll probably even be there tomorrow. After all, a bridge doesn't fall down in a day.
But it will fall down. Something critical will finally break. Will you be on it when it does? Wouldn't you want to see if there are any other bridges that accomplish the same thing?
Block That Metaphor.
Block That Metaphor.
And that it may take several months at least
to train new guys to maintain the bridge, especially when there's no one left to train them.
Time to at least use another bridge for a while :-)
Gotta love watching you
Gotta love watching you childish loons throw a hissy fit over Musk’s purchase of Twitter.
Reminds me of all the threats of people moving to Canada back in 2016.
It is so weird to watch you dipshits miss the point
The owner has fired EIGHTY EIGHT PERCENT of the staff. I cannot think of any company, tech or not, that can survive with 12% of its knowledge base, nevermind with a gigantic traffic event like the World Cup starting this weekend.
Twitter is going to break. It might come back, but it might not, and those of us (like Adam) who've been on the internet since the usenet days know that the smartest thing to do is make a new home *before* the old one goes up in flames.
The problem is that Musk
The problem is that Musk doesn't seem to have had any plans for what to do with Twitter, and seems a bit vague on how it works. Not "what is it for?" but "how do we keep the servers running" or why it's a bad idea to let anyone with eight dollars impersonate your major advertisers.
The entire payroll department and the US tax team left yesterday, which is A Problem. Next week's salary payments will probably go through, but what happens after that?
Dude's the ultimate alpha! We
Dude's the ultimate alpha! We should all bow down to sniff some alpha farts. I'm an alpha, having some bud lights with mah alpha bros at Hooters while all you betas eat tapas with your significant others. Strong leadership is something you libs are scared of. /s
How is it not obvious to anyone with a pulse that it's a total dumpster fire?
All you Ayn Rand guys
are seeing an Atlas Shrugged event in real time as all the essential people quit, leaving the looters with nothing, and you can't recognize that.